


firstborn

by Wildehack (Tyleet)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Gen, child endangerment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 02:44:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5810536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He dreams of a girl: dark-haired, blue-eyed, maybe four years old. She looks like his mother.  The Force pours off her in warm waves, and he feels a swell of love so powerful it feels like misery, registers in his body like pain. She loves him too. He can feel it, sweet as belonging, certain as forgiveness. </p><p>Or: Kylo Ren, with baby fever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	firstborn

**Author's Note:**

> THIS WAS A JOKE. A JOKE GONE VERY AWRY. It actually started with an anonymous prompt on tumblr: 
> 
> "Through plot device of your choice, Kylo Ren has a child. Given the history of relations between the generations in his family, he decides infanticide is a great option. Unfortunately for Kylo, this goes about as well as infanticide usually goes in stories. So, if you'd like, tell us this kid's story!" 
> 
> I filled the prompt, then filled it again, and then joked a lot about how on earth Ben Organa actually ends up with a kid, and like...Anon, this is the plot device of my choice. 
> 
> Thanks to @dignifiedrice for listening to me ramble about Kylo Ren's baby feelings like a champ. <3
> 
> I should be tagging for all kinds of dark shit, but I'm a little at a loss. Kylo Ren is a bad person, you know? and this is a story about him. Bad things happen in it. 
> 
> ...That said, this is a story about Kylo Ren's baby fever. So.

Ren kills his father and stops sleeping. He stays awake for days on end, shaky with the strain of it, lights sparking at the edges of his vision. It still beats the nightmares. He knows his sacrifice was terrible, and he prays it will be worth it, in the end. But that comfort is worth nothing in his dreams, and even less when he wakes in the dark with an awful loneliness that aches like a bruise. Ren dreams every night of the resigned love on his father’s face, wakes up weeping with the imprint of his father’s fingers burning on his cheek. Those are the good dreams. In the bad dreams, his father slides the lightsaber between Ren’s own ribs, and Ren knows he deserves it. His eyes grow hollow, his thoughts circle restlessly, and the Force slides through his hands like water.   
  
_What would heal you, child_ , his grandfather’s spirit asks, finally, an indistinct shape in the dark of Ren’s room. He comes to whisper cool wisdom into Ren’s dreams, and sometimes rests a ghostly hand over Ren’s heart and tells him he’s doing the right thing. But even he cannot stop the nightmares.  _What is it you ache for? Not to take back your choice_.   
  
A young, scared part of Ren’s mind insists that of course he wants to take it back. His father is  _dead_. But he’s stronger than that person; stronger than Ben Organa. He forces himself to answer honestly: “I want forgiveness. I want absolution.”   
  
_Who can give you that absolution?_  his grandfather asks.   
  
Ren closes his eyes. It feels like a betrayal, but he knows better than to lie to Darth Vader. He’s tried it before. “Only my family. And they will never grant it.”   
  
There’s a long silence, although his awareness of his grandfather does not dim.  _Kylo Ren_ , he says, finally.  _Your parents need not be your only family_.  _I have felt it. You will have a future._

It takes a long moment for Ren to understand, and when he does, a wave of horror rolls over him. “You intend for me to bring a child into this war?” he asks, his voice thick with feeling.  
  
_I intend for you to uphold my legacy_ , his grandfather says, and then his spirit vanishes.

Ren gives the idea no consideration, at first. He barely even thinks of it. He cannot think of children while fighting a war, and at any rate he cannot imagine himself as a father. He certainly has no interest in tying himself to any  _mother_. Beyond that—he knows it is disloyal to even consider it, but the fear creeps up on him regardless—if he fathers a child, it might be stronger than him. The Supreme-Commander might want to take it from him, as would be his right.

No. No child.   
  
But the next time he orders a troop to destroy a village—always unfortunate, but in this case necessary—he hesitates over the infants. There are two of them, one human and one Mon Calamari, their parents begging for mercy. He’s trained himself with long, bitter experience not to listen to their cries—just because something is right, in the greater scheme of things, does not make it easy—but this time he can’t. The human baby is wailing with fear, and its father is shielding it with his body. The Mon Calamari infant has one small hand curled tightly around its mother’s neck for comfort, even as she shakes with sobs. A familiar dread opens up in Ren’s gut—Ben Organa’s doubt creeping in, as it does from time to time—but this time there’s something else. A tendril of new sympathy.   
  
“Cease fire,” he grinds out, backing up his suggestion with a Force command. The screams are louder in the sudden stillness.   
  
“Sir?” the commanding officer asks, cautiously.   
  
“Collect the children first,” he orders, even though it isn’t practical—they’re days away from the nearest training outpost, and Hux hardly ever accepts non-humans into the program. “We’ll send them on the next shuttle.”   
  
He makes himself watch as they tear the children from their parents’ arms. It disturbs him, as he has not been disturbed since the first year with his Master.   
  
He begs for his grandfather’s presence, that night, but he does not come. He falls asleep, dread and guilt coiled together in his belly, and waits for the nightmares to descend.   
  
They don’t. Instead, he dreams of a girl: dark-haired, blue-eyed, maybe four years old. She looks like his mother.  The Force pours off her in warm waves, and he feels a swell of love so powerful it feels like misery, registers in his body like pain. She loves him too. He can feel it, sweet as belonging, certain as forgiveness. He wakes up weeping, want a sharp razor in his gut. He's abruptly certain it was a vision, that if he only lets it, she will come true.   
  
He’s been alone for so long, without a family for so long. She would be a child of his blood—a child that could love him, who he could teach the ways of the True Force, a girl he could raise in the light of his grandfather’s truth. 

His mother told him when was young that the Dark Side was opposed to love, but she was wrong. The Dark Side required love, as the Light required sacrifice. He would stand between them, as he always did, and strive without mercy or quarter for the Balance that was his destiny.   
  
If he had a child, there would be another hope for the galaxy, should he fail. Surely he should put his fears aside, for the sake of that hope.

*  
  
The opportunity comes to him a month later, when he makes a routine inspection of Bandomeer and finds an untouched Aerin’s Glass in the wreckage of the palace. He has it discreetly inspected, and then wipes the memory of the inspection from the doctor’s mind. It’s in perfect working order. He brings it to his rooms with hands that tremble very slightly, and locks it in a cupboard under his own Force signature. No one, not even his Master, would be able to force the cupboard open.  
  
Just having it in his rooms eases the nightmares. Instead of being haunted by his father’s last moments, he dreams of his earliest memories: reaching out with the Force and feeling his uncle reach back, fold him in warmth and reassurance. No matter how far away Uncle Luke went, his spirit was always there for Ben. He wakes, as he always does, full of yearning.  
  
He opens the cupboard, gazing down at the Glass. It’s not a beautiful machine, although the thin glass wand that gives the Glass its name is not unpleasing. But inside the dormant oven at the Glass’s core, Darth Vader’s legacy will grow. Ben Organa’s child.  
  
_Will you do it now?_ his grandfather asks, materializing as suddenly as he departed. He sounds carefully eager.  
  
“Not here,” Ren says, and carefully locks the cupboard up again. “It’s not safe.” There’s an empty moon he knows, orbiting an uninhabited ocean world. There’s a house on that moon that once belonged to Luke Skywalker. Only his immediate family knew of its existence. Luke Skywalker will never reclaim it.  
  
_Don’t wait too long, my son_ , his grandfather says. _Children do not grow quickly._ _The sooner you begin, the better she can serve your Master._  
  
“Yes,” Ren agrees, although he frowns a little. He has not yet told the Supreme Commander of his plans—although of course he will. The Supreme Commander will certainly be pleased. He is always interested in Force-sensitive children, and surely Ren’s child will be of even greater interest. But he does not yet know if the sample will take, or if the child will _be_ Force-sensitive. He cannot believe she will not be gifted, but there are always anomalies. Better to wait. Better to be sure.  
  
On his next leave, he travels alone to his uncle’s house. It is sandstone, sunken into the earth, sheltered by a crater. Completely invisible from orbit, only visible on the surface if you knew what to look for. The air outside the forcefield is poisonous. There’s no life anywhere else on the moon. He remembers that his father used to call it Luke’s fortress of solitude, and almost forgets to flinch at the memory.

It’s dusty inside, without the faintest trace of his mother’s Force signature, as he’d half-feared. Nothing’s been touched in fifteen years. Not since the first time Ben came back here, after Uncle Luke vanished. He’ll have to get someone expendable to clean it, for the child. He sets himself to work creating even stronger wards—permanent Force suggestions to go elsewhere, embedded in the foundations of the house. When he’s done, not even Uncle Luke should be able to tell the house existed.  
  
He’s too tired to begin, after that, so he rifles through the kitchen and finds something edible, sorts carefully through the papers left in the study. There’s nothing much of interest, although he does find a stuffed caniphant from his own childhood, tucked carefully into the desk’s bottom drawer. He considers keeping it for the child, but he quickly decides against it. It’s old, faded, the stitching on one button eye coming loose. He has a better legacy to give his daughter. He sleeps in his childhood bed that night, knees curled up to his chest, the family holo on the mantle almost burnt out, flickering on and off.

In the morning, he sets the Glass up in the solarium, where she’ll at least have the light of the sun and moon, when he’s not there. With very little ceremony, he sterilizes a knife and slits his palm open with one careful stroke. Any DNA sample would do, but he wants it to be blood, wants it to leave a mark on him. He watches the blood dribble down the glass wand, into the waiting computer. It takes a considerable effort to persuade the machine to read his DNA as two separate samples, but he is certain it will work. Anakin Skywalker was born with the strength of one mortal body and the power of the Force. His daughter will be the same. He’s grey and sweating when it’s done, but he succeeds: the Glass lights up, whirring softly as it isolates the materials necessary for new life from his blood.  
  
He sleeps again on the solarium floor, too exhausted to move, and when he wakes up the sun is setting again, and his child has begun to grow. She’s only a little bundle of atoms and potential, and so she’ll remain for at least half a year, but still. She exists. He’s gripped by a sudden, stupid desire to tell his mom.  
  
He calls for his grandfather, but his grandfather does not come.  
  
*  
  
He doesn’t see his grandfather’s spirit again for another four months. He leaves the Glass alone for most of that time, hidden by every measure wealth and The Force can provide. But he is never far from her side—he stretches himself out to the growing bundle of nerves and consciousness as often as he can, warming her, letting her know he is there, that he is hers. He tries not to travel too far from the moon’s system, beyond even his mental reach. Three months later, he is reaching absently out to her while sparring with Tala, when he feels a distinct response. The barest brush against his spirit, like the fluttering of a moth’s wing. He freezes, and Tala nearly beheads him.  
  
“Sir?” she asks in a shaky voice, dropping her saber immediately.  
  
He waves her impatiently to quiet, and focuses every bit of mental energy he has on the Glass, two worlds away. It comes again, a feather-light projection of inchoate feeling: _warm/happy/touching/here_. His child’s fledgling spirit, already sending herself out.

He’s briefly overwhelmed with pride and a furious, frightened possessiveness, which he takes out on Tala, beating her down until she’s forced to pick up her saber again. It’s a lesson worth learning, anyway, and the burns will heal.  
  
That night, he lets himself reach out to the baby again and again, feeling her respond, her growing delight at the game. Here and then gone! Here and then gone! Alone and then not! Her joy sparks his own. He already loves her, he realizes, shocked by the depth of his feeling. He loves her more than he hates his Uncle’s betrayal. He loves her more than his mother, than his murdered father, than his own life.  
  
_You have done well_ , his grandfather says with finality, materializing as if in response to the sudden swell of emotion in Ren’s chest. _She is already strong in the Force._

“Stronger than I was, at that age,” Ren confesses, and marvels that he once thought his daughter’s strength would diminish his. Her power _is_ his power. Her glory will be an extension of his, as he has always been an extension of his grandfather.

 _How long until she is born?_  
  
“Only two months,” Ren says, unable to keep from smiling.  
  
_Excellent_ , his grandfather says. _You will give her to your Master then._  
  
For a second, Ren doesn’t allow himself to understand. “What?” he asks, soft.  
  
_It is always better to begin right away,_ his grandfather explains. _You were almost too old, when your Master began your lessons._  
  
Ben was ten, when the Supreme Commander first made contact with him. He doesn’t regret those early lessons—Snoke showed him the truth of the Balance, how to reach his grandfather’s spirit, revealed the truth of Ren’s destiny to him. He will never be anything but grateful. But—“I don’t want to,” he whispers. He looks pleadingly at his grandfather, who has always understood him so well. “Please. I don’t want to give her up.”  
  
_She needs to be trained._  
  
“ _I_ could train her,” Ben argues, panic making him breathless. He doesn’t want to let anyone else into her head, even to dig inside and show her the Truth. He doesn’t want to let anyone else _touch_ her—even his Master. He feels his daughter tug lightly at the bond between them, and he has to concentrate to keep his distress from reaching her. He draws in a shuddering breath, and considers how far he is willing to go, to keep her safe. “I want to train her. I’ll do anything the Supreme Commander asks of me, only—“  
  
_Only not this?_ His grandfather radiates disapproval. _You have sacrificed so much to the Balance, Kylo Ren, only to stop here. Will all your sacrifices be for nothing?_  
  
“ _No_ ,” Ben protests, heart hammering against his ribs. “No, I consign it all to my Master! My life, my soul, the lives of my parents, my uncle—“ Lor San and T’iri and Kells and Bantyn, Tala and Madra and Theo, the other students at the academy, the Mon Calamari baby with her curled hand on her mother’s neck, all the lives he’s traded for the hope of a better future. “I give it all willingly,” he vows again, slipping to his knees. “Everything I have, I give to the Balance.”  
  
Darth Vader looks down at him. _Then you will give your Master the girl._  
  
She pulls again at the bond, a sweet flutter at the edge of his mind _. Warm/fed/alone/not alone/Come back?_ He cannot bury his love under the crush of his duty, because his duty is also to his daughter.  
  
“I can’t,” Ben says, the raw truth of it tearing at his heart. “Her soul is not mine to give.”

 _This is a temptation of the Light,_ his grandfather tells him sharply. _You must resist it._  
  
But Ben knows the temptations of the Light, as he knows the lures of the Dark. What he feels now is pure and raw, mingling elements of both. The force of his loyalty and the rigid tenderness he feels do come from the Light. But the reckless strength of his love, the razor-sharp selfishness that means he wants to keep his daughter safe and _his_ —these come to him from the shadow. “This is right,” he says hoarsely. “I can feel it.”  
  
_This is…unexpected_ , his grandfather says, after a terrible pause. _Your Master will not be pleased._  
  
“He doesn’t need to know,” Ben whispers, suppliant. “Please, my lord. I can keep her secret—keep her safe until she’s old enough to choose the Balance, for herself.”

 _So,_ the spirit says _, you will lie to your Master, for her sake._  
  
Ben knows better than to lie to Darth Vader.

 _Are you no longer his servant?_ the spirit asks, and there is some danger in its voice that Ren can’t quite identify.  
  
“I serve the Balance,” Ben confesses, and blinks tears away from his eyes. “I am grateful to him, always, but grandfather—you must know that I have always been yours, and not his.”  
  
The silence stretches on and on, and Ben shivers, sick with dread, cold sweat breaking out on his arms. His head is pounding, and the child has at last fallen asleep.  
  
_I see_ , the spirit says.  
  
*

His grandfather does not stay away for nearly as long, after that. He does not ask Ren to confide in Snoke again, which Ren takes as acceptance, if not approval. But he never follows him to the house on the empty moon, no matter how often Ren asks him to.  
  
Ren has other things to concern him. Firstly, there is the matter of the Resistance, which continues to make trouble in the core planets. He felt the scavenger girl’s presence briefly on Telos, before she vanished. The Supreme Leader desires Rey’s capture almost as strongly as he desires Skywalker’s death. Secondly, there is the problem of his Knights, who have grown dangerously restless in the face of his distraction. He’ll need to give them a mission, and soon, or face an ill-advised challenge.  
  
There is also the matter of her name.

“What was my grandmother like?” he asks his grandfather. The only grandmother he’s ever known is Gran, who lives on Corellia and isn’t even really related to him. She just took care of his father, after he was orphaned. She cheated at cards and kept twists of violet candy in her pockets. Undoubtedly she hates Ben, now, like the rest of them.  
  
_Padmé Amidala_ , the ghost replies, seeming almost disinterested. His grandfather is often distracted, now. _She was beautiful enough. But an enemy of our cause. Her loyalty to the Republic blinded her to the Truth._  
  
“Not a first name, then,” Ren decides. “It has potential for a middle name, though.” He likes the idea of tying his daughter to the only family legacy he has chosen to inherit, binding them together in history as well as blood and love.  
  
He adds it carefully to the list, and returns to the top four candidates. “What do you think of Allana?” he asks. There’s an interested tug along the bond, but his daughter is not yet a fair judge of names. She sends a spark of curiosity to him the first time he said the name _Rey_ out loud in her presence.  
  
His grandfather ignores him. _You cannot keep the child a secret forever_ , he says instead. _How will you protect her?_  
  
Ben has given serious thought to the matter. He has already found a woman willing to live with the baby, alone in the facility he built for her—he has pored extensively over her mind, and has found her to be a fair caregiver and entirely Force-null. She will follow whatever suggestions he plants in her mind, and will not interfere with either his defenses or his contact with his daughter. That will not last forever—but it should last long enough that he can fortify his position, make certain he could keep his child safe at his side.  
  
_And if your Master should object?_  
  
“Then I will have no other choice but to consider my training complete,” Ren forces himself to say aloud, two different loyalties warring in his breast.  
  
*  
  
He decides, finally, on Anakin Padmé Naberrie Skywalker. Ana.  
  
_Are you ready to be born, Ana,_ he sends down the bond, rubbing absently at the scar on his palm. _Are you ready to meet me?_  
  
_Different/warmer/not alone/hungry?_ she sends back, which he takes as a yes.  
  
*  
  
The Supreme Commander continues to press him on the matter of the scavenger girl, but seems to have seen no trace of Ana’s existence in Ren’s mind. “You cannot let the girl beat you again,” Snoke tells him during their next training session, leaving Ren gasping with effort on the floor. “If she does, perhaps I will take her on as my apprentice.”  
  
“I fought Luke Skywalker and won,” Ren pants between heaving breaths. “No one is stronger than me.”  
  
“Not yet,” Snoke says, and orders him again to meditate on the scavenger girl, on her bright eyes and her strange, scalding presence.

He sees Rey again the day Ana is born. Her nursemaid has been living in the house for a month, and everything is ready for his daughter’s arrival. He wants badly to be there, to lift her from the Glass with his own two hands, but the Supreme Commander and the Resistance appear to be united in their efforts to keep him occupied.  
  
He’s fighting a losing battle when the bond springs to life, tugging him so frantically towards Ana that he physically turns in the direction of her moon. An urgent pulse of _Different/Loud/Bright/Hurts/Not alone/Come back?/Now_ hits him, and he sucks in a bitter breath. Rey’s saber misses him by a fraction.  
  
“What was that?” Rey accuses, her eyes wide. “That tug?”  
  
“Nothing,” Ben snarls, slamming his shields back up, which has the drawback of cutting off Ana as well as Rey. The thought of losing Ana now fills him with enough fear to survive anything, even when he feels his uncle’s presence elsewhere on the planet’s surface.

He makes his report to the Supreme Commander still bloodied from the fight. “You see, I did well,” he says, desperation to go to Ana making him bold. “I defeated the scavenger scum.”  
  
“You let her escape,” the Supreme Commander says, his magnified voice cold.

Ren swallows his response, which is that he couldn’t prevent it. “I am sorry, my Master,” he says instead.  
  
“Go,” Snoke says, and there’s a finality in his tone that Ren does not have the energy to understand.  
  
As soon as he’s released, he commissions a TIE fighter for himself, and doesn’t bother with all of his usual precautions. His shields are already flickering in and out with exhaustion—it would be more dangerous to stay, at this point, than it would be to go. And Ana has been alive and in the world for six hours already, wondering where he was the entire time; he has to go to her. He has to be there.  
  
_I’m coming_ , he sends to her, frantically soothing. _I’m coming to you now._  
  
_Bright/different/loud/smells_ , Ana complains.  
  
He scans the nurse’s mind as his fighter lands, sees that everything proceeded normally: Ana has been fed, Ana has been cleaned, Ana has been alternately wailing and napping for hours, Ana needs to be fed again soon. He collapses the nurse as he walks in, catching her with the Force before she hits the ground, and then easing her down the rest of the way. He doesn’t want to meet Ana in the company of a stranger.  
  
He enters the solarium and steps over the nurse’s body, makes his way to the crib.  
  
Ana is very, very small, and very pink. She looks nothing like the girl in his vision: her eyes are dark, and there’s a tuft of sandy hair on top of her head. There’s a dimple in her tiny chin. She looks like Uncle Luke, except for her nose, which is already pronounced. She’s going to look like him; she’s going to look like his dad. Ben’s eyes blur with tears, and he blinks them away with something like rage—he doesn’t want to miss a single instant of _seeing_ her.  
  
_Here_ , she sends to him with something like selfish pleasure as he very carefully scoops her up. Her entire body fits in both of his hands. He can feel her heartbeat against his wrist. _Here/not alone/touching/Here_.

“Yeah,” he says to her, and she blinks her dark eyes at the sound, and his voice comes out cracked and soft. “You’ve got me, kid. I’m here.”  
  
*  
  
He holds Ana for hours, just feeling her breathe. Her whole body expands with every inhale, contracts slightly with every exhale, and it feels absurdly like he’s holding an extra heart, beating in his hands. She continues to sleep and cry, and he revives the nurse so she can reassure him that newborns _do_ just cry sometimes, and nothing’s wrong. Ana’s just adjusting to being in the world. “It’s hard to be small,” the nurse coos, and he restrains himself from the absurd desire to snap her neck for minimizing Ana’s struggle. Instead, she brings him a warm bottle, and Ben cries a little when he feeds Ana and she projects a bright, uncomplicated joy.

He doesn’t want to put her back in her crib to sleep, but the nurse reminds him that it’s dangerous to sleep with a baby next to you, and he’s too exhausted to stay awake all night. There’s a cot beside the crib that he intended for the nurse to sleep on, but he can’t actually bear to leave Ana and go to the next room. The nurse warns him that Ana will have him up all night, but he sends her to sleep in the master bedroom anyway, and curls up on the cot himself.  
  
He can’t resist sliding his hand through the bars of the crib, resting his knuckles against her side. “Goodnight, baby,” he murmurs.  
  
_Warm/here/different_ , Ana responds drowsily.  
  
His eyelids slide shut, lift to look at her one last time, and drift closed again. He sleeps.  
  
Ana does not wake him in the night.  
  
*  
  
When he opens his eyes, he’s on a ship. He can tell by the hum, the slightly lighter gravity. There’s barely enough time for him to realize that something is very wrong before a needle slides into his neck. Dizziness creeps over him, and the dark rushes in again.  
  
The next time he wakes, he’s being roughly lifted off a metal table—by a trooper, his own subordinate. He goes to crush the man’s windpipe with rage, but finds he can’t touch the Force at all. He’s being blocked. The panic sets in just as he realizes he can’t feel the bond, that anything could have happened to Ana, and he wouldn’t know.  
  
He’s thrown without ceremony into the Supreme Commander’s audience chamber. He doesn’t bother getting up off his knees. His Master is waiting for him.  
  
“Where is she,” Ben chokes out.  
  
“You betrayed me, Kylo Ren,” the Supreme Commander says, in a silky voice. “I gave you opportunity after opportunity to do your duty, and you defied me at every turn.”  
  
“Please,” Ben begs, and can’t even muster shame at the sob that shakes through him. “Please tell me where my daughter is.”

“What is the price of your betrayal?” his Master asks, implacable. “What cost the fifteen years I labored over you?”  
  
“Please,” Ben says, the terror too strong for him to think, let alone reply. “Oh please, my Master.”  
  
“Am I your Master?” Snoke’s voice turns abruptly vicious. “I thought you only served your miserable family.”  
  
Ben is shaking too badly to speak, his teeth chattering together.  
  
“I should kill you,” Snoke says gently. “A disloyal servant is no servant at all.” There’s a terrible pause, and the only sound in the room is the sound of Ben’s struggle for air. Please, he mouths soundlessly, _please_. “I will not kill you today, Kylo Ren,” Snoke says. “It will be years before my apprentice is ready to join me. One who I will make worthy of my legacy. Do you understand?”  
  
“She—she’s alive,” Ben gasps, clutching at the only thing he is capable of understanding.

“Yes,” Snoke says, disgust dripping off him, and Ben has to shut his eyes to stop himself from weeping with relief. “She is alive. You will continue to serve me, to keep her that way.”  
  
“Anything,” Ben vows, meaning it. “I’ll do anything.” A fierce heat envelops him as he utters the words, a Force compulsion threading through them. He’ll keep this promise, no matter how much time should pass.

“You will,” Snoke agrees, and Ben gasps as the block lifts, and he can touch the Force again. He reaches immediately for Ana, but the bond is muffled. He can feel that she’s alive, but nothing else, not even where she is.  
  
“Thank you,” he tells Snoke, tears streaming unchecked down his face, grief and guilt choking him so he can barely force the words out. “Thank you, Master.”  
  
*  
  
Back in his quarters, Ben shakes and shakes. He feels colder than he’s ever been in his life. Shock, he thinks distantly. He presses over and over again at the sore spot that Ana used to occupy in his mind, the knowledge that she lives less reassuring every time. She must be confused, she must miss him, the blocked bond must hurt her the way it hurt him. What if she's cold? What if she's hungry?  
  
_This all could have been avoided_ , the ghost says out of the dark, _if you had only listened._  
  
Ben doesn’t reply, doesn’t even look up. He’s still shaking.  
  
_You were tempted, and you failed,_ the spirit says. _You see, now, that it is too late for you. There never was any escape from your duty, or your destiny_.

“No escape,” Ben repeats dully, and knows it for the undeniable truth.  
  
_For her sake_ , the spirit says, and its voice has changed. It no longer sounds like his grandfather at all. _I hope you’ve learned your lesson._  
  
“I’ve learned my lesson,” Ben repeats.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm wildehack on tumblr, if you wanna come talk to me about Ben Organa or the daughter that he will never, ever get to raise, not in a million AUs.


End file.
